Dr. William F. Pepper is an internationally acclaimed lawyer who defended James Earl Ray in a 1999 civil trial (supported by Martin Luther King’s family) where the jury found Ray not responsible for the MLK assassination. Now Pepper is defending Sirhan Sirhan for the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, a case he says is ‘an easier one than the assassination of Martin King and the innocence of James Earl Ray’.…

The unthinkable — that elements inside the state would conspire with criminals to kill innocent civilians — has become not only thinkable but commonplace in the last century. A seminal example was in French Algeria, where dissident elements of the French armed forces, resisting General de Gaulle’s plans for Algerian independence, organized as the Secret Army Organization and bombed civilians indiscriminately, with targets including hospitals and schools. 1 Critics like Alexander Litvinenko, who was subsequently murdered in London in November 2006, have charged that the 1999 bombings of apartment buildings around Moscow, attributed to Chechen separatists, were in fact the work of the Russian secret service (FSB).…

(New York, NY, June 13, 2008) — On Tuesday, June 17th at 5pm, at Union Square in New York City, former Senator Mike Gravel, speaking on behalf of the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative Campaign, will call for a new and far reaching investigation of the crimes of 9/11.…

AMY GOODMAN: Former Alaska senator and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Gravel is holding a news conference in New York City today to call for a new independent investigation into 9/11. Gravel will be speaking on behalf of the NYC 9/11 Ballot Initiative Campaign, a grassroots group seeking to place an initiative on the ballot of the November 6th general election allowing registered New York City voters to create a new commission to investigate 9/11.…

Intro, continued: Scott Horton, of AntiwarRadio.com, interviewed Sibel Edmonds and the blogger who’s long covered her important case (which the corporate media still refuses to touch), Luke Ryland, to shine some light on what might be happening here. Again, Congress refuses to hold hearings, and hold anyone to account. This interview reviews some of the information that’s come to light in Sibel’s 6-year case, as well as the utter lack of action by Congress with regard to the entire network of whistleblowers with whom she’s associated.…

Last month 25-year-old U.S. Army PFC Robin Long became the first war resister since the Vietnam War to be forcefully deported from Canadian soil and handed over to military authorities. Robin is currently being held in the El Paso County Jail, near Colorado Springs, Colorado, awaiting a military court martial for resisting the unjust and illegal war against and occupation of Iraq. Robin will be court martialed for desertion “with intent to remain away permanently” — Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice — in early September.…

Welcome to Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. My name is Erik Lawyer, and I am the
founding member. I am currently a full time firefighter, and have been assigned
to 3 Truck in the City of Seattle for the last 12 years. Before that I was with
the City of Sacramento as a Firefighter Paramedic. I first began working in
Emergency Services in 1988 in the Sacramento area with a 911 private paramedic
ambulance company. I have 20 years experience in Emergency Services.…

Back in 2002, on the very first anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, KPFA 94.1-FM radio in Berkeley launched Guns and Butter , a locally produced, regionally broadcast weekly show that is possibly progressive radio’s most subversive. The program features muckraking intelligentsia from the fringe looking in and those from the geopolitical eye of the storm looking out.…

At 7:30 a.m. this morning, they climbed a nine-foot fence to occupy a 35-foot-high
ledge at the National Archives.

And five members of the Veterans for Peace organization have been there ever
since. They say they’re veterans of Vietnam and Iraq, anti-war activists, and
soldiers for a cause who plan to fast for 24 hours in protest of the Bush administration.

Seeking the criminal prosecution of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the organization
distributed “Citizens’ Arrest Warrants” to tourists waiting in line
to enter the archives, which houses the key documents of U.S.…

As campaign ads urge voters to consider who will be a better “Commander in Chief,” Andrew J. Bacevich — Professor of International Relations at Boston University, retired Army colonel, and West Point graduate — joins Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL to encourage viewers to take a step back and connect the dots between U.S. foreign policy, consumerism, politics, and militarism.

Bacevich begins his new book, THE LIMITS OF POWER: THE END OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, with an epigraph taken from the Bible: “Put thine house in order.” Bacevich explained his choice to Bill Moyers:

U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet.…

The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) must be a person whose previous professional performance has been distinguished by unimpeachable integrity and independence. The director must have the courage of his or her own convictions.

Without integrity and courage, all virtue is specious, and no amount of structural or organizational reform will make any difference.

Though a 2004 law gave most of the DCI’s intelligence community-wide authority to the new position of Director of National Intelligence — after the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks and after the false intelligence analysis on Iraq’s WMDs — the same principles regarding integrity and courage apply to the DNI.…

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people
to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.…

In a companion essay (reprinted below), I discussed the response of some articles in the mainstream press to the claim, made by some defenders of Israel, that Professor Richard Falk should be removed from his current position of UN rapporteur on human rights abuses in the Palestinian Territories — a claim that was reflected in the refusal of Israel on December 14, 2008, to allow him to enter the country. I included in this essay a discussion of an article by reporter Joel Brinkley because, although it was published before Israel’s action against Falk 1 , it could be read as a defense of that action.…

It is becoming clear that the bailout measures of late 2008 may have consequences at least as grave for an open society as the response to 9/11 in 2001. Many members of Congress felt coerced into voting against their inclinations, and the normal procedures for orderly consideration of a bill were dispensed with.

The excuse for bypassing normal legislative procedures was the existence of an emergency.…

Machiavelli wrote, “There are many who think a wise prince ought, when he has the chance, to foment astutely some enmity, so that by suppressing it he will augment his greatness.”

This tactic has often been used or considered. Germany was blamed during World War I for an unprovoked attack on the “Lusitania,” which was carrying arms to the British, and the Vietnam War was expanded based on a false report on Aug.…